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Even as he was making a series of roster-altering trades last February, Raptors president Masai Ujiri was looking forward to this week.

It was all well and good to add the veteran presence of Serge Ibaka to take pressure off a raw rookie in Pascal Siakam, and the addition of P.J. Tucker gave the team some sorely needed defensive grit for the final quarter of the 2016-17 NBA regular season.

But Ujiri is adamant that time is what good teams need — habits developed in training camps and practice sessions set a tone for an entire season of games, games, games — in order to give themselves the greatest chance at prolonged success.

So it is with that in mind that the team takes the court starting Tuesday in Victoria, giving coach Dwane Casey and Ujiri a chance to build on what’s here.

Even though half of last year’s top eight in the rotation are gone — Tucker, DeMarre Carroll, Patrick Patterson and Cory Joseph are now playing elsewhere — Ujiri has given Casey a roster that’s familiar enough that major change isn’t needed, but one that will benefit from a full training camp together.

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Ibaka played just 23 regular-season games last year, and only four with Kyle Lowry. Delon Wright was hidden in a third-guard role and now gains more responsibility. C.J. Miles has to find out where his three-point shooting acumen can be best utilized, coming off his best season as a pro.

And there are some questions to answer:

Will Miles or Norm Powell be the starting small forward when the season begins Oct. 19?

Can Fred VanVleet show enough to usurp Wright as the backup to point guard Kyle Lowry?

How will the front-court rotation shake out behind Ibaka and Jonas Valanciunas, with both Siakam and Jakob Poeltl seemingly ready for increased responsibility?

And most important, can coach Casey find the “culture reset” to take any semblance of complacency away from a team that’s averaged more than 50 wins over the past three years?

Casey’s biggest challenge will be trying to figure out how to use a roster that has a huge disparity in experience between the first and second units. While the presumptive starters have been around a while — Lowry and Miles are entering their 13th NBA seasons, DeMar DeRozan and Ibaka their ninth, Valanciunas his sixth — the backups have not.

Wright and Powell are going into their third seasons, Poeltl and Siakam their second and Bruno Caboclo may as well be an NBA rookie. Melding them into a group that can be counted on consistently will be a major training camp task.

That “culture reset” — changing attitudes as much as playing style — is what Ujiri called for and needs to see now that he’s got the team he wants, with the pieces he thinks can be successful together for the most important time of the season.

It’s more than taking a ton of three-pointers, although that should improve with the addition of Miles. It’s more than finding tweaks to a defensive system that was ranked in the top third of the NBA last season. It’s more than ball movement on offence to better mirror that league-wide style of play in vogue right now.

“We are going to try to, a little bit,” Ujiri said of a style change. “I am not asking for a dramatic change. If that is what anybody is looking for, well, maybe this isn’t the team to watch for that.”

It’s cohesion and dedication, and not settling for just being good when being great might just mean more preparation, which begins in the first full training camp with this roster.

The Raptors will have the maximum 20 players in training camp starting Tuesday in Victoria, B.C. Here’s the breakdown:

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